The "flow" of sub rogues in shadowlands

[Narzok]

didn't want to start a new threat, but they nerfed Sepsis as it no longer proccs vanish:

Infect the target's blood, dealing (162.89% of Attack power) Nature damage over 10 sec. If the target survives its full duration, they suffer an additional (77.5667% of Attack power) damage and you gain 1 use of any Stealth ability for 5 sec.

Cooldown reduced by 30 sec if Sepsis does not last its full duration.

no more 2nd vanish to disengage in PvP combat, no legendary procc for both the Master Assassin and the Vanish legendary, and instead 1 use of a stealth ability that 2 of 3 speccs can barely use and the 3rd is drowning in anyways.

only positive is that it is now useable while soloing stuff...
and almost all potency conduits got a hefty nerf across almost half the speccs, not just rogues.
they even nerfed feral conduits....

[Coldkil]

didn't want to start a new threat, but they nerfed Sepsis as it no longer proccs vanish:

Infect the target's blood, dealing (162.89% of Attack power) Nature damage over 10 sec. If the target survives its full duration, they suffer an additional (77.5667% of Attack power) damage and you gain 1 use of any Stealth ability for 5 sec.

Cooldown reduced by 30 sec if Sepsis does not last its full duration.

no more 2nd vanish to disengage in PvP combat, no legendary proc for both the Master Assassin and the Vanish legendary, and instead 1 use of a stealth ability that 2 of 3 speccs can barely use and the 3rd is drowning in anyways.

only positive is that it is now useable while soloing stuff...
and almost all potency conduits got a hefty nerf across almost half the speccs, not just rogues.
they even nerfed feral conduits....

To me it just seems more like a fix than a nerf. It simply didn't work before, and now you get a small window to use Stealth when it's more effective. I don't remeber the CD reduction that was in place before, so that may be a straight nerf.

Anyway, so far Covenant abilities for rogues are all pretty much balanced and useful, with Kyrian surprisingly being the top right now. Anyway no way i'm gonna take it since it's a clusterfuck and i hate the design.

[Kaver]

didn't want to start a new threat, but they nerfed Sepsis as it no longer proccs vanish:

Infect the target's blood, dealing (162.89% of Attack power) Nature damage over 10 sec. If the target survives its full duration, they suffer an additional (77.5667% of Attack power) damage and you gain 1 use of any Stealth ability for 5 sec.

Cooldown reduced by 30 sec if Sepsis does not last its full duration.

no more 2nd vanish to disengage in PvP combat, no legendary procc for both the Master Assassin and the Vanish legendary, and instead 1 use of a stealth ability that 2 of 3 speccs can barely use and the 3rd is drowning in anyways.

only positive is that it is now useable while soloing stuff...
and almost all potency conduits got a hefty nerf across almost half the speccs, not just rogues.
they even nerfed feral conduits....

Fine change. The vanish effect was way too strong for pvp.

[Buddyshrews]

In the end, we all know that PvE wise until there are some specific scenarios, we're going with the option that nets more damage, and then adapt our playstyle. I just think that having so much uptime of dances kinda defeats the design of the skill itself.

It's definitely a matter of preference at this point, but I feel like the impact of Shadow Dance as a cool down has been really diminished since the Legion re-work. Vanish was also a casualty. I don't really think of Shadow Dance as a cool down anymore, but just part of the rotation. It also lends to the spec feeling really limp out of dance.

I'm a fan of the MoP and WoD era versions. If you set everything up properly, you knew things were going to get crazy when you hit shadow dance. Maybe that amount of burst was why hard to balance. I'm not sure. It certainly got a little ridiculous toward the end of WoD.

The new changes really feel like a half-step between old sub and legion sub. Enveloping Shadows and Deepening Shadows make dance feel really unsatisfying for me, but as you said it's what people will use if it's the meta.

[Coldkil]

Could you share your tree pls. I just came back from a break and I found that I go clumsy in between SD and control outside it but it really felt like I done some talents wrong and need to swap. I mainly found myself out of SD for longer than would be desirable in any scenario

https://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/rogue/subtlety/mC9z

It's not optimal. Weaponmaster should be the more desiderable option, also when SL comes out we'll go Shadow Focus because right now we have the First Dance Azerite trait that compensates. Most of the job is done by Enveloping Shadows though. I also try to pool energy a little to get the 6th combo if i can.

Directly on SL talk, Kyrian seems now to be the strongest ability, but i'm just not going Kyrian whatsoever.

[Coldkil]

Thanks man. Any suggestions other than Kyrian then? (pvp mainly).

Uh, PvP is not my thing and i'm really out of touch with it. If i do guesswork, Necrolord should be good because it's ranged and a permanent undispellable dot. I don't Sepsis as an execute should help with added pressure when going for the kill plus the added vanish thing. I don't know if Venthyr is actually useful given it's a ranged cleave but seems tailored more towards sustained dps/PvE. Kyrian is way too unpredictable imho to be an actually good ability in any situation but i suppose a 7 combo finisher brings its weight.

Just my 2 cents. I don't know what a true PvP player would prefer, and i'm pretty sure all covenants are good in specific situations.

[thesmall001]

I'll refer you to my follow-up analysis of the results of the survey @Shadesmarr put up in this thread. This analysis is how perceptions have shifted, on average, from Tuesday to Sunday. To view the full analysis, right-click each image and "Inspect" it if you don't have an alt-text reader plug-in for your browser. (But get an alt text reader for your browser!)

Updated data from WoW class/spec enjoyability survey. 14 specs did not change in terms of enjoyability. Std. Deviation of specs increased slightly. Deviation in the ratio of enjoyability to complexity and viability stayed mostly the same, as did the correlations between perceptions of viability and enjoyability.

Holy Priests suffered the biggest drop in perceptions of enjoyability, relative to the previous analysis, dropping 11 ranks. Unholy Death Knights dropped 6 ranks (perceived 5% less enjoyable since the last data set). These were high performers that moved to middle of the pack.

Guardian Druids dropped 4 ranks to almost the bottom of the rankings, with joint second from last enjoyability with Feral Druid and Holy Paladins. Only Arms Warriors are below them, consistent with last week.

Subtlety Rogue and Fury Warriors had the joint largest gain relative to their previous week. 5% was a bigger gain for Subtlety than Fury as Sub was previously mid-pack and is now top-pack.

What's interesting is that Sub saw a big up-tick in perceptions of enjoyability and a slight up-tick in perceptions of complexity and viability. Previous analysis has shown that players correlate enjoyability far more with perceptions of viability, rather than complexity. And, yeah, as the week ticked on people (on this forum, at least, with very little validity to the unverifiable data) appeared to recognise the nuances in Sub since the patch and are enjoying it more as time goes on.

[Niwes]

ok. here is my theory:

as in the last 4 xpacs, same as usual will happen:
- sub starts great
- sub gets nerfed to the ground, before .1 even is out
- assa will remain as the top notch spec 90% of xpac
- rest get the garbage location.
- combat/outlaw for m+ full aoe
- sub is dead

reasons:

- as always for all other pure dps classes blizz just get 1 spec top notch balanced. rest is garbage, cause 36 specs.
- as always, blizz get assa easy „balanced“ (if you will call it so), so no investment/effort
- blizz not changed or overhauled rogue that much, that they can go „sorry all assa rogues out there, you have to play sub now“. so they do not wanna piss off all the assa players. typical conservative blizz stance.

in short:

short time after release assa will be king, outlaw for m+, sub dead. thats my prognosis. just my oppinion.

let me necro this, just because its now the 5th xpac where exactly the same happens. just a tiny thx to Blizzards HUGE wow investment...

when watching warcraftlogs and ladder or typical pvp sites you see a well known picture:

- raiding: sin or outlaw (depends on bosses)
- m+: outlaw
- pvp: sub

usefulness of sub in PvE: 0

same picture as always. i quoted myself, not to show what a great magican and foreseer i am, just to show how even an idiot like me realizes their damn inability to change things for 5 xpacs. its just so....

i just read the first line of first reply/post in this thread (@motorman: no offense here in any way!). you, fellow rogue players, should do too. at least i smiled. so i HAD to necro this. sorry

[Nythiz]

It's just too hard for blizzard to get sub right for PvE.

On ST(ish) fights like Shriekwing / Hungering Destroyer / Artificer it's not bad bad; it's middle of the pack and equal to outlaw.
The problem is that as soon as any secondary target appears, it just blows.
That makes sub maybe slightly better than in previous expansions, but still rather shitty.

I also feel like blizzard doesn't quite know where they want Sub to be.
It's clear that assa is king in ST and council fights where you can multidot.
It's also clear that outlaw is king in AoE.
But sub is a bit harder for them to give a good place. It has great control and burst, making it really good for PvP, but that serves little use in PvE currently.

Where assa goes from: Good ST -> Great Council/cleave -> Decent AoE
and Outlaw goes from: Decent ST -> Good to great council/cleave -> Great AoE
Sub just is: Decent ST -> horrible council/cleave -> mediocre AoE.

And blizzard just can't get it right. The funnel dps potential of sub is too much of a loose cannon for them to get right and it sucks.
I don't see why other specs get to be insanely good on fights that fit their niche for a whole patch to several patches (e.g. spriests), but as soon as sub gets one such fight it's stomped into the ground within 14 days.